AS the two main political parties of Sinn Féin and the DUP edge ever closer to the inevitable deal that saves both their blushes they can count on the Alliance party to tag along.
The desperation of the Alliance party to cling to office wouldn’t be so unedifying if it was not for the fact that it was the DUP which demonised them over the flags issue in the first place.
The Ulster Unionists under Mike Nesbitt will have calculated that being outside of the DUP/Sinn Féin cartel has done them no electoral harm. And that only leaves the SDLP to play their cards as to in or out of the Executive. In some ways it could be argued what the SDLP does or does not do is irrelevant.
Alasdair McDonnell has argued strenuously to stay in the Executive even though many of the major players in his party including former leader Margaret Ritchie have argued that an exit is long over due.
McDonnell has also argued that he is capable of leading the party from Westminster when the general consensus from within his own front bench and those with sounder judgement like Mark Durkan have made it clear that semi-detached leadership from Stormont does not work.
The decision to remain in the Executive increasingly appears to have less to do with SDLP strategy than a McDonnell safeguarding device.
Control is now central to the McDonnell campaign. The recent revelation that elected members who are in arrears with their party dues may be barred from voting in the leadership race would have been eminently more credible if it was a rule enforced throughout the year and not in the week before a knife edge election.
But the McDonnell faction controls the SDLP party Executive and whilst they could ill afford to alienate or withdraw the whip from elected members over a few quid during the year, they are prepared to risk it to win the leadership election. It matters little to them the festering resentment such a move would create.
However well intentioned and quite apart from three sets of the most disastrous election results in the history of the SDLP, the hallmarks of the McDonnell leadership has been division and disunity.
Even the lure of a sole ministry is a tasty morsel to dangle in front of power-starved politicians and McDonnell is a past master of political patronage.
One area of success during the McDonnell leadership has been the creation of a coterie of devotees throughout the organisation, where he has had a remarkable ability to convince bald men that a comb is worth having - providing it's his comb.
His recent assertion on TV that he never interferes in constituency matters may have sounded plausible to external observers of the SDLP but was a laugh out loud moment for anyone within the party.
If McDonnell wins the forthcoming leadership election it will have been his interference at grassroots, which will have delivered it.
That’s his strength. Unfortunately, Alasdair’s approach is more akin to Genghis Khan than Mahatma Gandhi. In his wake throughout constituencies, which bear his mark, unity is shattered leaving local organisations weakened with pro and anti McDonnell factions. The soul, which unifies the SDLP, is slowly evaporating.
Over the past number of years he has attracted some resources to the SDLP, only to squander it on peripheral projects such as re-branding.
It’s more than ironic that in all of these efforts to create a new look SDLP, quite apart from frustrating senior members of the party, that the most successful events that McDonnell has sponsored and which have energised the grassroots have been built around former deputy leader Seamus Mallon, the very individual who believes that it's time for him to exit the SDLP leadership.
McDonnell haughtily dismissed the veteran politician as being only one voice within the SDLP whilst he had the support of many more.
McDonnell is neither a stupid or foolish politician but he is a stubborn one. He sees his job as yet unfinished, very much like the final days of Margaret Thatcher and whilst Thatcher easily saw off her contender Michael Heseltine by a 14 per cent margin- those around her knew it was all over.
The SDLP membership needs to be more mindful, not of its own factions but of the external electorate who have rendered a harsh judgement on the party under the leadership of Alasdair McDonnell, not once but three times. This leadership election is the SDLP’s Gethsemane moment.
